Making Telecoms Work: From Technical Innovation to Commercial Success

Bridging the industry divide between the technical expertise of engineers and the aims of market and business planners, Making Telecoms Work provides a basis for more effective interdisciplinary analysis of technology, engineering, market and business investment risk and opportunity. Since fixed and mobile broadband has become a dominant deliverable, multiple areas of transition and transformation have occurred; the book places these changes in the context of the political, social and economic dynamics of the global telecommunications industry.

Drawing on 25 years of participative experience in the mobile phone and telecommunications industry, the author closely analyses the materials, components and devices that have had a transformative impact. By presenting detailed case studies of materials innovation, such as those shown at success story Apple, the book shows how the collaboration of technological imagination with business knowledge will shape the industry’s future.

• Makes a link between the technical aspects and the business practice of the telecoms industry, highlighting the commercial and economic significance of new developments
• Gives a historical analysis of past successes and failures in order to identify future competitive advantage opportunities
• Supplies detailed case studies of supply chain disconnects and the impact these have on industry risk and profitability
• Brings together technological detail with analysis of what is and is not commercially important, from the implications of energy and environmental networks to the technical details of wireless network hardware.

Geoff Varrall joined RTT in 1985 as an executive director and shareholder to develop RTT's international business as a provider of technology and business services to the wireless industry.
He co-developed RTT's original series of design and facilitation workshops including 'RF Technology', 'Data Over Radio', 'Introduction to Mobile Radio', and 'Private Mobile Radio Systems’ and developed 'The Oxford Programme', a five day strategic technology and market programme presented annually with the Shosteck Group. Over the past twenty years, several thousand senior level delegates have attended these programmes.
As a Director of Cambridge Wireless, Geoff is involved in a number of wireless heritage initiatives that aim to capture and record past technology and engineering experience and has helped with fundraising at the Science Museum for the new Making of Modern Communications Gallery opening in 2014.